


Thievery and Grace

by stellacanta



Series: Rewind. Reset. [3]
Category: Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 12:57:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17488448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellacanta/pseuds/stellacanta
Summary: When they traveled back in time, it was with the intention of fixing things with as little impact as possible. (Trust Alfyn to mess that up by just being Alfyn.)





	Thievery and Grace

Primrose asked Alfyn about it one day while the group was relaxing in yet another pub somewhere. “Hey Alfyn, I know you’re carrying Zeph’s satchel right now, but where did you get your first one from?”

Alfyn, cheeks flushed from drink, had given her a soppy grin. “Funny story, actually. Y’know how I got saved by the guy who owned Tressa’s diary?”

“Yeah, and?”

“Well, apparently he left his bag behind after he left our village. Thought it was funny, y’know a traveling apothecary without a medicine satchel, but I guess that man had his reasons.” Alfyn took a look at the mug in his hands and shook his head. “Poor guy, guess it’s a good thing we finally have a chance to set everything right, huh?”

“Right.” The conversation was over, but Primrose continued to watch him out of the corner of his eye, or, more specifically, his satchel. Her eyes narrowed. Alfyn never did switch back his satchel with Zeph after leaving Clearbrook did he?

……

“You want us to do what now?” Therion didn’t raise his voice but it was clear from his tone of voice that he found the idea to be slightly preposterous.

Primrose simply crossed her arms and stared him down. She knew what she said, and she wasn’t going to back down from it. “Steal Graham Crossford’s apothecary satchel or are you now having hearing problems?”

Therion held his hands up to placate her. “No I heard you perfectly fine the first time, I’m just wondering what suddenly got into you that you want me to steal _his_ satchel out of nowhere.” The scowl on Therion’s face grew. “If you need an apothecary, there’s always Alfyn, if you need certain medicinal plants or whatever, you could just bring _me_ with you to steal them off of the monsters we keep coming across. And there’s one more thing.”

Primrose raised her eyebrow. “And what would that be?”

“Graham Crossford is a _traveling apothecary_ , I’m pretty sure he _needs_ that bag. If he doesn’t find it on his person, he’s going to cause a ruckus to get it back. So I hope you planned for that in advance.”

“I think I can come up with something. So, do you think you can steal that satchel or should I ask _another_ master thief for the honors.”

“Now, now, Primrose. I never said, I wouldn’t do it.” Therion looked up at her with a serious look in his eyes. “I just want to know one thing though. Why?”

Primrose gritted her teeth as she gave Therion her most polite smile. “Ah, because apparently Graham Crossford left behind his apothecary bag with Alfyn after saving his life. And have I mentioned that Alfyn is still carrying his dear friend Zeph’s satchel?”

“Oh.”

“Oh is right.”

……

Surprisingly, convincing Tressa to purchase a new apothecary satchel for Alfyn had been the hardest part of the whole endeavor. The young woman had been surprisingly resistant to the whole idea. “That satchel is Alfyn’s greatest treasure,” she had told Primrose when asked. “I can’t just _buy_ a satchel to replace it.” For a merchant, the girl was strangely sentimental at times. In the end, she agreed to buy a replacement satchel in case the current one broke. Primrose ignored the younger woman muttering that Alfyn would just keep fixing and cleaning the thing and not to plan on it breaking anytime soon.

Convincing Graham Crossford to drink honeyed mead laced with sleepweed hadn’t been hard. The man was lonely on his travels and was happy to have an interested person listen to his stories. Stealing the bag off of Graham hadn’t been hard when the man was asleep either.

Therion and Primrose rifled through Graham’s apothecary satchel as the man snored away on the inn bag. They made note of the various numbers of addlewort and purifying dust and whatnot that he had, and took a small handful of rare plants that the man had collected on his travels. All these things they placed into the _new_ bag that Tressa had purchased earlier that day. (Therion had managed to convince Primrose that Graham would probably notice if they just switched the bags, man had been traveling with his for years at this point after all.)

Everything was going swimmingly until Therion came across the small, leather-bound journal that Graham had in his bag. A small leather-bound journal that contained his notes of various illnesses and treatments. “I don’t suppose he’ll be missing _this_ if we take it will he,” he asked sarcastically, knowing full well what the answer was.

Primrose sighed and took the journal from Therion’s hands, and flipped through the pages. “If nothing else we have time. The sleepweed should knock him out for another couple of hours at least. That should be plenty of time to copy everything off of this into a new journal, and we already have a list of the guidebooks that Graham was carrying on him. This is the only thing left to take.”

“Ugh, my hand hurts just thinking of copying all that off of there. That’s got to be at least a hundred pages of notes just crammed into there.”

“We have a scholar in our group,” Primrose reassured Therion. “Between the three of us, we should be able to get everything off with our friend here none the wiser.”

(They did manage to get all the notes transferred to a new notebook. Cyrus had been surprisingly receptive to the idea of copying off some medical notes for Alfyn to peruse. Somehow, Primrose expected a little more resistance given what had happened with Tressa. Therion managed to drop the journal off with the rest of Graham’s things early in the morning, the man leaving town none the wiser.)

……

There was one last thing to do before they switch the bags. Primrose popped the button of the middle pocket off the new bag after comparing Zeph’s satchel to the one they had prepared. Therion raised his eyebrow. “Why’d you do that?”

“Because I can’t very well stitch the name ‘Zeph’ into the inner pockets and that bag-” She pointed to Zeph’s satchel. “-is missing a button. Alfyn will notice if it’s suddenly there.”

“Huh, how thorough of you.”

“I try.”

Therion ignored her as he looked through the contents of the bags one final time. At the very bottom of Zeph’s satchel he found an envelope marked ‘To Alfyn’. He paused. A momento hmm? Alfyn probably might just notice if it was missing.

Primrose nodded her approval when he slipped the envelope at the very bottom of all the supplies in the new bag, the things taken from Graham’s bag carefully hidden away in places where Alfyn wouldn’t notice them. (Which meant at the bottom of the innermost pockets since the apothecary seemed to place the most important things at top and the outer pockets where they were within easy reach. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have noticed the weight was slightly off, although a mortar and pestle and a few empty bottles were removed to help keep the weight equal.)

After one final check, the two left the new bag with Alfyn and took Zeph’s satchel with them. When Alfyn left that morning, he did so none the wiser.

……

(None of them could have known that the envelope marked ‘To Alfyn’ carried another envelope within it. One that was marked ‘To Mercedes’.)

**Author's Note:**

> **Press - for divine banter**
> 
>  
> 
> Sealticge: Oh Alfyn … (giggles)  
> Aeber: …  
> Aeber: You should take more pity on your disciple.  
> Sealticge: On Primrose, you mean?  
> Sealticge: Ah, but the dear girl deals with adversity with such strength and grace.  
> Sealticge: As her patron goddess I could not be more proud of her.  
> Sealticge: (giggles) She deals with everything with such aplomb that I wonder if I shouldn’t place more challenges for her sometimes.  
> Aeber: (… that poor girl having to deal with Sealticge as a patron goddess.)


End file.
